Williams Anaise, Stuart Colleen, Perrin Nancy, Heise Lori, Anglewicz Philip, Decker Michele R
Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
World Dev. 2025 Feb;186. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106846. Epub 2024 Nov 15.
Women's empowerment and poverty alleviation are two key factors for successful and equitable international development. Norms surrounding women's economic participation and economic agency change over time, with some individuals achieving economic empowerment earlier than others. These "vanguard" women represent the leading edge of change. The objective of this study is to discuss and compare methodological strategies for creating a measure that captures the extent to which a woman's actions exceed community norms regarding economic participation and agency. We refer to this measure as the "Vanguard Women's Economic Empowerment (WEE) Index." The Demographic and Health Surveys for 49 countries were used to capture community-level WEE norms using 8 WEE measures. To identify whether a community is non-normative for a WEE item, we explore four strategies, inclusive of two thresholds and two approaches for middle-prevalence communities. Using the community assignment, we construct the individual-level Vanguard WEE Index that captures the number of WEE items a woman has that are non-normative, i.e. vanguard, in her community. We validate this index through associating it with a validated index on women's financial discrimination. Subsequently, the characteristics of "vanguard" women were assessed through mixed effects modeling. Women who register higher on the Vanguard WEE Index are likely to be older, poorer, and live in rural communities. This study is the first to offer a valid method for measuring the extent that a woman goes against the community norm on economic participation and agency in low- and middle-income settings. The results outline a strategy for contextualizing women's economic empowerment within that setting's normative context. Practitioners and policy-makers can use this index when implementing economic empowerment programs to identify those who are pushing the needle in their community, as these women may be critical changemakers for gender equity broadly.
妇女赋权和减贫是实现成功且公平的国际发展的两个关键因素。围绕妇女经济参与和经济能动性的规范会随时间变化，一些人比其他人更早实现经济赋权。这些“先锋”女性代表了变革的前沿。本研究的目的是讨论和比较用于创建一种衡量方法的方法论策略，该衡量方法能捕捉女性行为超出社区关于经济参与和能动性规范的程度。我们将此衡量方法称为“先锋妇女经济赋权（WEE）指数”。利用49个国家的人口与健康调查，通过8项WEE衡量指标来获取社区层面的WEE规范。为确定一个社区对于某项WEE指标是否不符合规范，我们探索了四种策略，包括两种阈值策略以及针对中等流行率社区的两种方法。利用社区赋值，我们构建了个体层面的先锋WEE指数，该指数能捕捉一名女性在其社区中具有的不符合规范（即先锋）的WEE指标数量。我们通过将其与经过验证的女性金融歧视指数相关联来验证该指数。随后，通过混合效应模型评估“先锋”女性的特征。在先锋WEE指数上得分较高的女性可能年龄更大、更贫困，且生活在农村社区。本研究首次提供了一种有效的方法，用于衡量低收入和中等收入环境中女性在经济参与和能动性方面违背社区规范的程度。研究结果勾勒出了一种在该环境的规范背景下将妇女经济赋权情境化的策略。从业者和政策制定者在实施经济赋权项目时可以使用这个指数来识别那些在其社区中推动变革的人，因为这些女性可能是实现广泛性别平等的关键变革推动者。
